Partnerships and Participation: Reconfiguring Urban Governance in Different State Contexts

Abstract

This paper compares the discourse and practices of purportedly collaborative or "partnership" approaches to urban governance in the United States and United Kingdom, as enacted through nationally-directed planning and revitalization programs. The language and underlying principles used to justify and advance such participation initiatives are similar, but differences in state structure in these two national contexts differentiate how and to what effect the engagement of local citizens actually occurs. Governance partnerships are one example of a growing array of policies privileging the local scale, and this "new localism" is commanding attention by U.S. and U.K. urban geographers working a variety of research contexts. Such study of the practices and impacts of a new localism is critically important in an urban geography research agenda, in light of concerns about how ongoing political and economic restructuring affects empowerment and inequity within and between urban areas and among social groups in the city.